Council of Bioethics Installed

23.11.2003

Lissbon - After a delay of nearly two years, Portugal's Prime Minister, Durâo Barroso, on September 21 appointed new members of the National Council for Ethics in Life Sciences. The first challenge for the Council will be to reach a position on the use of human embryos in research, which will form the basis for subsequent legislation on the issue. In his speech, Barroso gave few clues on the position his government would ultimately adopt, saying: “Some people, in the name of science, would like to allow everything; others, in the name of ethics, would like to ban everything. (The Council) must strike a balance on the issue.”

Lisbon – In the southwest of Europe, GMOs are gaining ground. According to the European Association for BioIndustries EuropaBio, Portuguese farmers have grown nearly 60% more genetically modified (GM) maize this year compared to...

Lisbon – According to a report published by business intelligence provider Espicom, the future for biopharma on the westernmost tip of Europe looks anything but sunny. Its analysts predict that by 2016, the pharmaceuticals market...

Lisbon – Portugal’s “Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia” (FCT) is to channel funding into collaborations between Portuguese and Indian life science companies and research within the networking pilot programme “New Indigo”...

Coimbra/San Francisco/Munster – Portuguese and US researchers have discovered a new factor that determines whether an embryonic stem cell (ESC) will remain pluripotent or not. After the team under Miguel and Joao Ramalho-Santos...

Madrid –The Spanish Ministry of Health is investing in future biotech treatments. In July, it signed a EUR60m contract over a recombinantly manufactured flu vaccine developed by Rockville-based Novavax. In Phase II trials, the...

Forensic scientists have laid the groundwork to expand and harmonise the exchange of the roughly 6 million DNA fingerprints from criminal offenders that are currently stored in national DNA databases throughout the European...